A magnolia tree near the corner of Precita and Alabama begins to blossom after days of rain. Bernal Hill is in the background.

IndieFest is showing two films at the Roxie tonight that I want to tell you about: Let Them Know and Skills Like This.

Let Them Know, at 7:15, is the story of Youth Brigade and the record label they founded, BYO Records (that’s for Better Youth Organization, not Bring Your Own). The film interviews and name-checks just about everyone involved in the LA punk scene from the early 1980s on. If you liked Attitude, you’ll definitely like this closer look at one particular scene, as seen through the eyes of an important label. (Trailer here.)

Skills Like This, screening at 9:30, is a completely different animal. It’s a comedy about a failed writer, Max Solomon (Spencer Berger) who discovers his real talent: grand larceny. Berger makes me think simultaneously of Dan Akroyd and Bill Murray, and the capsule review describes the film as “a fast and furious comic ride about the lengths to which the disaffected will go to achieve their dreams.” The film won the Audience Award for Narrative Film at South by Southwest in 2007. (Trailer here.)

Even if you are the most anti-Valentines’ Day, anti-mushy person in the universe, it’s pretty hard to avoid all the fun that happens on Feb. 14th in San Francisco. There are hundreds of events and here are a handful that I would definitely be attending if I wasn’t in Los Angeles with my honey for the weekend. So go and report back on how much fun you had!!

Have bike? Have some pre-Valentines’ Day fun tonight at the SF Bike Coalition’s “Love on Wheels.” This is a great opportunity to meet fellow bicyclists and maybe even ride away hand in hand.

What better way to take all that aggression bubbling in you out on the entire city at Pillow Fight! Bring your pillow to Justin Herman Plaza at 6pm and be prepared to whack a few moles.

Fancy some tea and crumpets? Crown & Crumpet have a menu full of l’amour and a it’s a great excuse to dress-up like you did as a kid for tea parties.

Had a hard week? How about a full day of massage? Yes please! You and your playmate can spend an entire day learning how to massage each other at The Center For Healing and Expression. Sounds better than a box of chocolates!

Have you ever attended a “no pants party?” Trust me when I say everyone should do it at least once. The Knockout is hosting the “5th Annual Underwear Party.” You don’t even have to fret over what to wear! Be sure to check your undies for holes!

For a list of other fun events on Love Day, check out SF Station and Upcoming

One of the IndieFest films I got a chance to preview this week was Harrison Montgomery, which plays tonight at the Roxie and on the 20th at the Shattuck. It’s a strong ensemble film about a petty drug dealer and aspiring artist who, in the aftermath of a deal gone extremely bad, gets wrapped up in the lives of his neighbors. It stars Martin Landau as the title character, Octavio Gomez Berrios (Guerrilla) as the drug dealer, and Melora Walters (Magnolia, Boogie Nights) as the fetching older woman — luckily enough, also an aspiring artist — who lives across the hall with her daughter and jerk boyfriend. Look out! The film is very engaging, with several unexpected formal elements and a strong component of magical realism. It also builds up to an ending I guarantee you won’t predict, and you’ll be swept away by it.

It’s a San Francisco film all the way through. Not only were director Daniel Davila and producer Karim Ahmad both based here, but the film was shot entirely in the Tenderloin, on the block or two around Hotel Boyd, where the exteriors and some interiors were shot, and in a housing compound in the Presidio, where the rest of the interiors were done.

This is the very end of the film’s festival run; Davila and Ahmad told me, in an interview yesterday, that they view these screenings as a sort of homecoming for the film. Ahmad said that they were in negotiations for a commercial US release, so tonight (and the 20th in Berkeley) is your last chance to see it before everyone else does.

Trailer here.

Savannah Knoop, who for several years played the role of JT LeRoy in public, will appear as herself in Michelle Tea’s monthly RADAR reading series tonight at 6:00 pm at the San Francisco Public Library. (Description, times and location of the event here.)

Knoop is the author of Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy from Seven Stories Press. Tea told me Knoop would be “reading something, and that there will be elements of performance art as well” at the event.

Also appearing are filmmaker and writer Hilary Goldberg,performer Lauren LoGiudice, and Fresno poet Bana Witt — who is great. My money’s on Witt to steal the show.

After President Barack Obama Monday told an Indiana audience that companies should “not give out these big bonuses until you’ve paid taxpayers back. You can’t get corporate jets — (applause) — you can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime,” the investment bank Goldman Sachs announced it was moving a conference from Las Vegas to San Francisco. (Update: here’s a link to information about the conference in question.)

Not because San Francisco is cheaper, because it’s not. No, money was “not the driving reason behind (the decision),” a spokesman said. “The decision to relocate the conference is based on our best efforts to operate according to the requirements of the new landscape of our industry.”

Goldman Sachs got $10 billion in the TARP bailout last fall. Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco, recently canceled a trip to Vegas for some of its employees. They received $25 billion. (The bank, not the employees.)

Now Las Vegas’s mayor is demanding an apology from Obama for implying there’s something wrong with going to Las Vegas. “What’s a better place, as I say, than for them to come here,” Oscar Goodman told a Las Vegas TV station. “And to change their mind and to go someplace else and to cancel — and at the suggestion of the president of the United States — that’s outrageous.”

From Foster’s Freeze on University. Note label: at least it’s Berkeley’s own Berkeley Farms milk!

The Bell Market in Noe Valley is set to close at 4:00 pm on Sunday, Feb. 15, according to signs posted on the store. I went in there last night to buy some baby food (for the cat — I don’t have any babies) and they were totally out of what I wanted. A look around the store revealed that many shelves were already bare, with empty banana cartons lining the empty bottom shelves.

Curbed SF has been saying that Whole Foods is taking over the location. Their most recent post on the matter says the location is expected to open in the fall, leaving more than six months for renovation to take place.

CalTrans will reopen a brand-new Harrison St. offramp from the Bay Bridge to the South Beach district at 5:00 a.m. Monday morning, three and a half years after the original exit closed in 2005. For drivers new to the area, the exit is a left exit off the bridge, half a mile before the left-hand Fifth St. exit.

The new ramp is another milestone in the multi-year project to earthquake-retrofit the bridge, the biggest piece of which will replace the eastern span (the part between Yerba Buena Island and Oakland) with a new suspension structure due to open, oh, seven or eight years from now.

Chinatown’s New Year Parade is not the only thing going on, it’s also the SF Chinatown Treasure Hunt, organized by Jayson Wechter. 100s, if not 1,000s, show up each year wind and rain, to run around downtown figuring out little clues for the sheer sake of peer approval and our love of taking tests.

I was in the Ox-ipital Lobes (it’s the Year of the Ox) and have put together a little picture story of the 4 1/2 hour long endurance test. First, we stood waiting for one and a half hours for my teammate, who had my ticket, to show up. Then, we were off at 5pm, to… get our scorecard!

We mulled about for a while trying different venues where we could sit, read, and discuss. Our usual haunt for this, One Market, was closed. We tried a few others, but made a difficult decision to go to Wine on Front, and endure kir royales, a cushy circular booth, and a New Zealand sauvignon blanc. I opted out of the cheese plate, since there was a time element to this hunt.

Besides answering the first part of every clue- and we actually got them all, which is a first for us, we built The Route.

This is a brilliant system of 1) avoiding crossing Grant St. and thus the Chinatown Parade 2) numbering the intersections by clue #, and 3) hitting North Beach first. Last two years we left the outlying areas for last, and after 3 hours walking you do not want to climb Telegraph Hill.

We got one or two done and then took break #2: Tosca’s.

Ah, then off to more clues, which were like this: walk down a scary alley, find people with headlamps (other trivia teams) bait them and tease them, meander around confused creating red herrings, then quickly scribble the answer and let out your team call, “Whoop!” Once we yelled that and nearly caused a woman to have a heart attack as she was quietly necking a guy a North Beach alcove. No lie.

Our “whoop” started because of an ultra-cheesy clue at Broadway and Columbus, where you “would let out a ‘Whoop!’. No, it wasn’t City Lights, it was the big pianist mural above New Hong Kong restaurant.

Here is the process, with photos:
1) Go down creepy alley

2) Tease other trivia hunters

3) Take a break and eat

3 hours pass of similar cycles, and for some reason we were running late. We’re not that competitive, though we did take it seriously. Is that possible? Serious enough to sit down to beef chow fun, veggie chow mein and broccoli and chicken, on break #3. Break #4 was the above dim sum shop on Jackson, the cutest and most festive street, and had the chewiest Chinese doughnuts I’ve ever had (not a good thing).

We lost our guy to a crab festival in North Beach (he wasn’t a signed-up real team member either), but we managed to push through the FiDi in record 20 minutes, and 5 clues. 2 of our ladies work there, so it was easy.

As we approached the bandstand at Justin Herman Plaza, there was an expectant air. Could we get any recognition for finishing all of the clues?

Last year we ran into the square at 10PM to absolutely nobody there, and it was a sad, crushing denouement. This year there were some official people hanging out who gave us the necessary approval, and we veered off to soak our feet and I personally headed home- another mile walk- but got sidetracked by a quick beer at Gino Carlo‘s with 2 teammates, then to enjoy carrot cake at Melt.